A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Saint Thomas Church on 5th Avenue

Faith & Science Conversation
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Enjoy this traditional Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols sung by the choir of men and boys at Saint Thomas Church on 5th Avenue.

If you want to skip right to “Royal David’s City,” move the timer to about 15:22. Listen carefully for the boy soloist who sings verse 1. (That’s one brave kid!)

Here’s the service leaflet. The carols are in English, Middle English, and Latin.

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Enjoyable indeed! I was brought up as a child in the Church of England before eventually ending up in an independent Charismatic church, and seeing more traditional Anglican church services whether on TV or on YouTube always brings back some happy memories. It also conveys to me a sense of discipline, quality, professionalism and careful attention to detail that isn’t always evident in more “lively” churches where passion is sometimes viewed almost a substitute for excellence.

I thought that the church had a surprisingly British flavour given that it’s in New York, even down to the very well-spoken Anglican accents of the clergy, so I looked up their website out of curiosity. It turns out that the Rector, Canon Carl Turner, hails from my own home town of Kingston upon Hull.

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Thank you for that. We watched it last night – I love choral descants especially.

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Thanks for watching

Our church runs a private Christian school for choir boys grades 3-8. The boys are amazing. They work so hard and are such a blessing, singing like angels.
(There is also a new choir for boys and girls age 5-12, where no audition is required)

Yes, and he was very fond of your late queen! The organist and director of music, Dr. Jeremy Filsell, is also from the U.K. I have to listen carefully because we also have a priest from Italy and one from Korea. We used to have a priest from Haiti.

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Then you will enjoy this article:
‘Everyone Wants to Hear’ This One Chord in a Christmas Carol

I love the descants of David Willcocks. The boy trebles sound so angelic!

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One thing I wish I had taken at university was Music Theory (at least through III, if not IV as well).

(I found the t-shirt ; - ) …

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(I’ll have no end of time to later. ; - )

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There’s also a popular “crunchy” (dissonant) chord in “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”

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Mozart’s and Beethoven’s dissonances are wonderful. Bach throws in a few too.

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Almost all polyphonic music has dissonances.
An even more famous chord is the Tristan Chord

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Nice.

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Do you want to take an online course? There are several courses on coursera.org

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Thanks, I may have to do that! It hasn’t been a burning desire, otherwise it might have occurred to me to look online. I did look at our university’s catalog last night, and interestingly, a recommended concurrent course was sight reading and ear training – I’m pretty good at the former and have a pretty good head start on the latter. :slightly_smiling_face:

The only one on the dropdown when you start putting “music theory” in the search field was University of Edinburgh :+1::slightly_smiling_face:, and in the full results under “Popular Searches” was Curtis (I know where it is :slightly_smiling_face:), both freebees, the right price. To go higher might cost, but I’m not there yet! It would probably mean less time here, but that would suit the mods just fine. :wink: I do have some household and elderly issues that are higher priority and inhibit though.

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There is a promising course from Michigan State University.

And the series “Inside the Score” on YouTube is excellent, but goes beyond music theory.

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